Building Collaborative Learning Opportunities between Future Veterinary and Design Professionals

Abstract

Positive inter-professional collaborations and interactions facilitate the effectiveness of veterinarians working on professional teams addressing a wide range of societal challenges. The need for these interactions extend far beyond the different medical professions, which is the limit of many discussions of inter-professional relations for veterinary medicine. Methods of problem solving differ across professions, and clinical veterinary problem solving is quite distinct from the approaches of non-medical professions. These distinctions are particularly obvious when looking at the approaches of design professionals. Yet, most veterinarians work in collaboration with architects and landscape architects at some time in their careers, with varying degrees of success. This case study describes a collaboration between a College of Veterinary Medicine and a College of Design in which a course was offered across both colleges that allowed students to build a real life design to suit the needs of a veterinary medical college considering how to best utilize space for animals, animal and human interaction and the holistic development of healthy spaces for humans. Results of the collaboration indicated that despite initial struggles, students from very different disciplinary backgrounds were able to effectively work in teams, problem solve, communicate and exchange ideas, learn to appreciate their peer counterparts, and produce a high-quality design that may ultimately be adopted by the university.